‘Ghostbusters 3’ Can Still Happen, According to Dan Aykroyd

When it was revealed that director Paul Feig was going to reboot Ghostbusters with an all-female cast, the general assumption was that Ghostbusters 3 was dead and buried. Gone forever. Kaput. Never to be mentioned again. But, Dan Aykroyd never got that memo. Aykroyd, who co-wrote and starred in the original films, has spent years talking up Ghostbusters 3 and he’s not going to let silly little things like an actual, official, studio-sanctioned remake with a cast and release date get in the way.

Aykroyd resurrected the Ghostbusters 3 conversation on an episode of the radio show Unmasked With Ron Bennington (via The Interrobang), where he laid out his slightly delusional plan. In his mind, Feig’s reboot will rejuvenate the franchise, allowing him to get the original gang back together for another film. If he has his way, we will get the reboot and a sequel:

Oh I’ve written… well, we have…I’ve written, well, there’s three drafts of the old concept that exists. And we’re going to be able to salvage some of it and use it. Yeah, we’re gonna be able to use it some day. Let’s get this one made and that will reinvigorate the franchise and then we’ll go on to maybe doing a more conventional third sequel as we were planning and another idea I have for it.

Poor Dan Aykroyd. We will always love you. You are one of the fathers of modern comedy. You are a genuine legend that no amount of vodka-hocking can diminish. But no.

To be fair to Aykroyd, he does make it clear that the reboot takes place in a completely separate universe from the original films. He’s also highly complimentary of Feig and his cast. He just thinks there will be room for both films, which sounds unlikely, at best. Aykroyd also claims that he’s helping rewrite the screenplay with Kate Dippold, but until we hear something official, he probably took a meeting or two to make his opinions known before being quietly shuffled aside.

Here is another quote from Aykroyd where he is gracious and complimentary of the new film ... which ultimately turns into another plug for his sequel:

The real reality in fact of the third movie with this tremendous cast of women, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig. . . I’ve got three daughters, so I’m all for female empowerment….[Feig] establishes the voices beautifully in these characters. Now of course, he’s got masters playing the roles for him, so this is going to really work in our favor for the third movie.